


Have and Hold

by t_pock



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff and Smut, Implied Switching, M/M, Porn with Feelings, Romance, Shinto Ceremony, Wedding, Wedding Night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:20:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25994359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/t_pock/pseuds/t_pock
Summary: Jesse always thought there’d be a firefight on his wedding day.
Relationships: Jesse McCree/Hanzo Shimada
Comments: 20
Kudos: 214





	Have and Hold

**Author's Note:**

> I got married this weekend and needed to channel some of my joy. What better outlet than two washed-up gangsters who need their own happy ending?
> 
> I did what research I could. Please enjoy cheesy old men in love.

The air on the mountain is thin and biting—it pierces Jesse’s skin like needles as fine as the ones on the tall pines keeping the path to the shrine. It smells like ash, the natural musk of the ancient volcano hiding the shrine in its foothills. The last light of the day casts a greenish tint on the snow piled high beside the stone path leading to the pagoda towering above the trees, turning the drifts the color of coral. Jesse feels almost biblical, hiking between the illusion of frozen waves.

“Cold feet?” Hanzo smirks, just as cutting as the air.

He keeps pace effortlessly at Jesse’s side, completely at ease climbing in tabi and sandals. His glossy, snow-flecked hair, now long enough to tickle his ribs, hangs over the kamon embroidered on his formal kimono—not the dragon ouroboros but something with teeth like a wolf.

“Not a chance,” Jesse promises with a wink.

He’s having a harder time in the montsuki haori and hakama. Hanzo is kind enough not to mock him for the way he fidgets under the heavy jacket, but only just—he snorts at Jesse’s bow-legged walk in the billowing pants, even though they both know he’s hamming it up.

A red squirrel leaps from a branch overhead, showering them in more powdery snow. It’s the only living creature aware of them for miles—not even the Shimada know about this place, let alone any of the small-time headhunters still stupid enough to try and collect their bounties. They’re both armed, but Jesse can tell by the taste of the air, acid pure from the hot springs down the slope, that they won’t need their weapons while they’re here.

It’s almost a shame. He always thought there’d be a firefight on his wedding day.

They enter the gate of the shrine right after sunset. What few jitters Jesse had on the way in settle down as they pass through the vermillion posts holding up the gate's horned black lintel. The cobblestone staircase they’ve been climbing for the better part of the afternoon flattens into a courtyard with torches posted at its cardinal corners. Ice fog from the mountaintop rolls through the compound, making the firelight look ghostly.

Right away the ceremony begins.

Everything has already been arranged, and there’s nobody in attendance except for the two of them—Jesse still hasn’t worked up the nerve to contact what little family he has left, and he’s pretty sure Genji deliberately disappeared with his master for the past month to spare Hanzo the choice. There’s nothing stopping a priest and a shrine maiden from floating out of the mist and greeting them without delay.

Jesse’s been brushing up on his Japanese, but he still can’t quite follow the ensuing conversation. Hanzo handles the whole thing in the lordly voice he uses when he wants something done, or when he’s reprimanding the stray dog that hangs out on their stoop. He slots his rough hand in Jesse’s and pulls him into line with the shrine attendants, and then they’re starting.

Someones somewhere start playing gagaku on high-voiced flutes. The reedy music echoes hauntingly off of the evergreens surrounding the shrine. Alongside them the shrine maiden shoulders a wide umbrella the same vibrant red as her flowing pants, shuffling forward in whispery sandals when the priest strikes up a march. They must look like a long-dead parade walking through the fog to the cadence of the flutes, escorted on either side by rows of stone lanterns. Jesse feels gooseflesh ripple up and down his remaining arm as he and Hanzo follow them in a procession across the grounds.

The train briefly stops at a water basin. Hanzo performs the cleansing rite first, ladling water on both his hands and his mouth. Jesse takes his time copying him, feeling nervous for a moment that the water will wash away red with the stain of all he’s done. Instead it splashes cold and clear to the ground, and beads into ice in the whiskers around his mouth. Hanzo waits until the priest is looking forward again before wiping away the crystals with his frigid, still damp hand.

At the foot of the shrine itself they ascend shallow stone steps into a ceremonial chamber. On either side of the ornate doors are tiers of wooden stands creaking under the weight of plump, dusted rice cakes. The chamber itself is paneled with painted woodland scenes and screened with woven curtains, behind which stands the altar at which Hanzo will become his husband: a wooden table piled with salt, water, rice, sake, fruit, and vegetables.

In the midst of the offerings are their rings.

They have to bow to the priest first, who chants prayers to ward off evil demons and brushes the air around them with a white tasseled wand. Once they’re purified they bow to the shrine’s god, whom the priest supplicates for divine attention on their ceremony. At the end of the prayer a bell is rung, and something about its clamor makes Hanzo shiver next to Jesse. He wishes he could reach out and run a firm hand down Hanzo’s spine, but they’re still bent humbly for their blessing.

They look up again when the priest retrieves a paper inkstroked with more prayer, announcing their marriage to the deities. Jesse hopes it’s alright to flick his eyes toward Hanzo, because he can’t look away from the stern slope of his nose, the dark fan of his lashes on his high cheeks, the trickle of his hair down his muscled shoulder. He’s a mythological vision with his breath steaming from his nostrils like incense rising from a dragon burner. Jesse has sipped the air from that hard mouth a hundred times before, but it’s almost impossible to believe that right now Hanzo is agreeing to let him do that for the rest of their godforsaken lives.

The shrine maiden comes forward with a bouquet of a tiny golden bells, one hand grasping the handle and the other draped with the long, silk ribbon streaming from the end. A drum pounds somewhere in the compound, and the maiden begins dancing to its heartbeat. The kagura is slow and reverent, punctuated with chimes like the tinkle of more snow falling down the mountainside. The solemnity and holiness reminds Jesse a little of dances he had seen as a child, not on freezing slopes but on hot sand plains. For a second the phantom scents of piñon and lavender tickle his nose—he wonders if Hanzo would be willing to swing by coyote country after they’re all done here.

With a final twist of the bells, the shrine maiden withdraws, and Jesse has to shake off his musings to participate in something like communion. The priest fills three saucers in three sizes with rice wine from a gold, double-headed, silk-clothed pitcher. They do a funny little back-and-forth with the first saucer—Hanzo takes three sips and then passes it back to get refilled for Jesse to do the same. They repeat the process with the other saucers until they’ve demonstrated their oaths three times three.

Jesse kinda thought the hullabaloo would be finished with that, but Hanzo surprises him by taking a paper from the priest and reading aloud from the artful calligraphy. His voice is clear and strong as a horn; he talks like he’s addressing the shrine’s god directly. Jesse doesn’t know enough kanji to understand the peek he takes over Hanzo’s shoulder, but he recognizes from the pride and gravity in his voice that these are vows.

He didn’t think he would tear up today, especially not without understanding a lick of the proceedings, but his eyes are surely prickling. He and Hanzo already said their pieces to each other a month ago, in between squealing, splinter-fire shots from Stormbow and deafening kicks of Peacekeeper’s hammer. Jesse had been dry as an old well then, mostly because his dead, red eye had already been desiccated by overuse. He’s sniffling now as Hanzo returns the paper in exchange for one of the rings.

He gestures imperiously for Jesse’s hand. Jesse gives it to him easily, feeling young and old and restless and grounded all at once. Those bow-callused fingers have caught on his own countless times before, but this touch is inexplicably new. A spark jumps between their palms, and Jesse realizes that Hanzo feels the exact same way.

The ring slides with finality onto Jesse’s finger. Somehow it’s the heaviest thing he’s ever worn, heavier even than his gun after the first time he fired it six times in the same second. But he feels strong enough to bear it.

He gets shocked while he slides the other ring onto Hanzo’s finger, a stinging pop of energy barely audible underneath the harrowing music still floating in the foggy air. That harsh, regal face is pulled into perfect stillness, but Hanzo is shedding nervous electricity where only Jesse can feel.

For some reason that makes Jesse’s eyes finally well up. He cups his hands around Hanzo’s, grounding, until the static dies away. Hanzo squeezes him back, crushing the ring painfully into Jesse’s skin, and then they turn back to the priest together.

The shrine maiden slips them both branches of cleyera tied with zigzagged paper and hemp thread. Hanzo closes his eyes to pray one last time, and Jesse follows his example—he doesn’t know any of this land’s gods, so he calls out to the ones of juniper sap and sun-bleached skulls on the off-chance they can hear him all the way from here. He waits for Hanzo to finish, and they lay their branches across the altar stem-first in unison.

Two bows, two claps, and one final, earnest bend at the waist—and they’re done. When they get to their feet to the roll of a taiko drum, they’re married. When the shrine maiden leads them back across the shrine grounds and they bid their thanks and goodbye to the attendants, they’re husbands.

Jesse can’t help himself. As soon as they pass back through the gate, he grabs Hanzo by the shoulders and pulls him off the path. The snow immediately seeps through their socks, and when he hauls Hanzo up against the nearest tree trunk they get dusted with even more flakes. Hanzo gives one belly-deep peal of laughter, turning the air between them crystalline with his breath, before Jesse swoops down to kiss him hard and smiling.

He pulls back before long. The muffled giggle somewhere behind him lets him know they didn’t get far enough out of the maiden’s sight. Hanzo doesn’t seem to care—he pulls Jesse down into another open-mouthed kiss, turning his knees to water like the snow melting underfoot.

When they finally break apart, Hanzo wastes no time grabbing his hand and pulling him back down the cobblestone staircase toward the mountain’s foot, ring pressing hot against his.

* * *

Mountain fog rolls through the sliding doors of their cabin, still ajar from their giddy, careless entrance. The nettling chill of night nips at their sweat-slick skin as they wrestle in the ruins of their futon. Moonlight glints off of Hanzo’s sharp grin, the same fangs responsible for the circle of bites still throbbing on the backs of Jesse’s thighs. He sniffs the mineral tang of hot springs on Hanzo’s hair, the spearmint of tree sprigs, the soot of ritual smoke. Hanzo smells like everything good that happened today.

He smells like forever.

Their sheets are damp with the consummation of their marriage. After spiriting them down to the foothills, Hanzo had shouldered McCree like a sack and tossed open the shoji of the cabin they were secreting in for the next week, strutting past the wedding feast prepared on a low table and dumping him on their turned-down bedding. Jesse was cackling too hard to object to Hanzo settling between his legs first, unwrapping him with hard, sure hands and sending a different kind of sparks skittering across his skin.

Jesse has Hanzo’s ring on his finger and his teethprints in his skin. Now that he’s tacky down to his knees and sore up his spine, he’s gonna return the favor.

When Hanzo flattens onto his belly to grope for the bottle of sake they plucked from their abandoned dinner, Jesse drops his whole weight onto his back, mouthing along his nape and slotting his cock along his muscled ass.

“Sweetheart,” he croons.

Hanzo never goes down without a fight, even and especially when he wants it. “Yes?” he hums back, abandoning the sake to try and squirm free.

Jesse gets to wrangling him, kissing whatever heaving flesh he can in between swipes of Hanzo’s elbows and knees. Hanzo’s wriggling rubs him up and down the curve of his waist, in between his clenching thighs—instead of bites Jesse marks him with glossy drops of pre, smearing him with his scent and his excitement.

“This is mine now,” Jesse reminds him, hugging him from behind like a bear and squeezing his huge arms to his side so he can rut his entire length against where Hanzo opens.

“It is,” Hanzo agrees even as he bucks, nearly breaking the hold on him. Both of them groan when the head of Jesse’s cock catches. It’s much easier to tuck Hanzo underneath him and pry his way inside after that.

Gooseflesh ripples down Jesse’s spine as he buries himself in Hanzo again and again—he’s burning hot all down his chest, belly, and groin from the volcanic heat of Hanzo’s body but freezing down his back from the caress of the mountain mist everywhere his husband isn’t touching. The familiar strike of their hips, like iron on anvil, sheds more sparks between them; Jesse slides his hand down Hanzo’s painted arm until their left hands overlap and he can close his paw around Hanzo’s fist of lightning.

“Love you,” he pants, feeling his hair curl with the electricity climbing his nerves. “I love you.”

Hanzo gasps down air, snapping his free hand back to gouge desperate, tingling lines of fire down whatever parts of Jesse he can reach. He mutters something into the sheets, quick and desperate, too low to hear but too raw to misunderstand.

Jesse pulls his other hand out from where he was rubbing him along, using it to grasp Hanzo’s chin wetly and pull him back into a painful kiss, telling him everything with his lips and tongue, opening wider for Hanzo’s fanged answer. In it is all that he needs to know—he lays Hanzo back down, thrusts until Hanzo growls his pleasure, and clenches his husband so close to him as he follows that their bones ache with the promise of one day mingling under earth.

They melt onto the tatami floors, shivering as they separate. It takes Jesse a long time to regain his breath, maybe because of the elevation and maybe because his eyes are prickling again. He runs a hand down Hanzo’s cheek, following the landscape of his bone and flesh, rubbing the silkiness of his beard, admiring the glint of his ring against Hanzo’s lined skin.

Hanzo snatches his hand and presses it to his mouth, eyes dark and meaningful.

Jesse swallows the lump in his throat. “You’re stuck with me now.”

“That’s more than I deserve,” Hanzo says quietly, kissing his ring again.

He tucks Jesse under his chin, and Jesse gets his arms around him so that their heartbeats are side by side. It’s just his fancy but the rhythms seem complementary, like the pulse of the taiko drum and tempo of the gagaku from before.

He thinks about getting up to close the doors and shut out the snowflakes blowing into their room, but Hanzo is warmth enough for him. He could go happy into the grave just like this as long as he shares the dirt with his husband, but he promised a shrine god today that he would use the rest of his pitiful life to make the man in front of him happy.

He’ll get to fulfilling that at first light, when dawn breaks through the boughs of the mountain’s tall trees and falls gleaming on the gift he doesn’t deserve but swears that he’ll earn.

**Author's Note:**

> Feast your eyes upon the delicious meal that [@HARDRAULICS ](https://twitter.com/HARDRAULICS) served up for this fic [right here](https://twitter.com/HARDRAULICS/status/1298304129891102721)!
> 
> I also exist on [Tumblr](https://t-pock.tumblr.com) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/t_pock_).


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